Olav Arnold, businessman and civic patron, has died at the age of 96. Along with his brothers, John and Martin, he was a great-grandson of E J Arnold who founded the educational suppliers of the same name in 1863. The firm was an iconic business in Leeds and survived until taken over by Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press in 1984. Olav was the grandson of Edward George Arnold, Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1916. He and his singer wife, Elizabeth, were renowned philanthropists in the city with links to almost every cultural and civic body. He was President of the Leeds Civic Trust, a director of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, a Trustee of the Leeds Library, with Elizabeth, patrons of the Sinfonia of Leeds, active volunteers with the Leeds International Piano Competition, donors to Opera North and key friends of the Leeds Lieder Festival.

He was a former chairman of the Scarcroft Parish council and co-wrote a history of the village in which he lived for over fifty years until retiring to Collingham in 2012. He was a keen amateur cellist.

James Olav Arnold, businessman and civic patron, born 18 October 1928, died 10 November 2024.